Yaesu FT-817 Arduino Controlled Beacon

Updated 2015-03-03

This code was created on a whim for fun, isn’t as polished as some of my other projects, and continues to evolve. It’s provided more to give people ideas on programming techniques or perhaps provide the basis for someone’s future Arduino beacon project. It controls a Yaesu FT-817 via a secondary serial port on the Arduino using the SoftSerial library. The code switches between the 6 meter and 10 meter bands, sending a message and switching bands. The message sequencer, located in void loop(), is easy to modify for different messages or bands. Additionally, the code can support up to six separate transmitters. The software is fully state machine based, so it is quite easy to add additional “multitasking” subroutines to do other things while code is being sent and not skip a beat. Examples of this might be weather station readings, temperature readings, power and SWR readings, etc.

I’m currently working on a dual band 6 and 10 meter beacon using this code and a DDS powered homebrew QRP transmitter. This code will probably interface with other Yaesu rigs with little to no modification.

Please post on the Radio Artisan discussion group if you would like to explore some development ideas. (I have not provided much documentation here as this is more a hacker project, but I’ll be happy to provide more if requested.) Consult this page for support.